Coldplay sends audience members home with a smile

Concerts rarely inspire audience members to turn their attention in as many different directions as Coldplay's Saturday night show at the Sommet Center did.

The British rock group's lavish stage production frequently urged its attendees to take in the spectacle around them rather than focus on the band on stage. Lasers shot across the venue for their hypnotic performance of "Clocks." Giant balloons rained from the ceiling at the start of the band's breakthrough hit, "Yellow." A swarm of neon, butterfly-shaped confetti shot into the air during their closing number.

Still, the most transfixing moments of the evening came when all eyes were focused on front man Chris Martin, who manages to balance commanding showmanship with palpable humility in a one-of-a-kind way.
As all the house lights turned on for "In My Place," Martin bounded down the stage catwalks, greeting his audience with equal measures of cockiness and gratitude. During the choruses, he turned the microphone toward the stands like he was lobbing a softball, and the crowd, in turn, knocked their cues out of the park.

Moments like these also gave Martin a quick chance to catch his breath, which he'd certainly earned. The singer would leap and whirl in his trademark fashion from one end of the stage to the other, drop his guitar to pound some chords on his upright piano, then hop over to aid guitarist Jonny Buckland in keyboard accompaniment. By the end of "Fix You," he slumped onto the piano and pointed to the crowd to go on singing without him. The audience also aided him in forming "the world's biggest backing band" to sing a single note at the end of "Yellow," which he dedicated to "Faith and Tim."

Getting a number of their biggest songs out of the way early in the set, Coldplay piled on the mood lighting and video effects for a stretch of songs from their latest album, Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. Tunes like "Cemeteries of London" and "Strawberry Swing" are smart and charming enough, but lack the dynamic arena punch of, say, the epic, show-stopping "Politik" from 2002's A Rush Of Blood To The Head.

Vida's title track, however, was greeted with the set's most energetic roar. Its orchestral flourishes and techno-inspired beat were a surprisingly good fit for an arena rock show, and also served as the perfect segue between two additional stages the band performed on during the evening.

The first was at the tip of the catwalk on stage left, where the band stood in close proximity and pounded out electronic versions of "God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" and "Talk." The second -- to the crowd's surprise -- was situated at the opposite end of the arena, where the band did a few acoustic numbers, including "Green Eyes" and an unlikely cover of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer."

When Martin returned to center stage to play "The Scientist" as the band's encore, he had one more (potential) surprise: free copies of Coldplay's live CD, LeftRightLeftRightLeft, would be available to fans as they left the concert. (The band announced the gift on their website recently -- the album is available as a download, but the hard copies are going to Coldplay ticketholders.)

The CD table was of course all but impossible to get anywhere near as the thousands made their exit, but judging by the rapturous response Martin and his band received at night's end, nobody was going home without a smile on their face -- with or without their free souvenir.